Lodging in luxury in an oilsands’ labour camp

Lodging in luxury

It is a luxurious image of an industry known for some of the world’s harshest working environments that will undoubtedly help to tackle a mounting labour shortage, though it remains far from the norm.

CONKLIN, ALBERTA — No career opportunities were available to Melissa Udala in the Okanagan Valley region of British Columbia where she was raised.

So when her fiancé got a job cooking for hungry Statoil Canada Ltd. workers up at the Norwegian company’s Leismer Lodge near the tiny northern Alberta hamlet of Conklin, she decided to tag along, finding a job answering phones at the front desk. A little more than one year later, the 22-year-old is the front desk manager and has no regrets.

“This is a great place,” she said in between responding to requests from the 480 staff the camp houses. “They took care of me and helped me grow with my career. You can’t find that too much anywhere else, where people want to help you.”

She is part of a new generation of Canadian oil sands workers who demand more comfortable accommodations for those living on-site and a better work-life balance. Statoil, which produces 17,000 barrels of oil per day from its nearby SAG-D project, is among a growing number of oil sands operators seeking to provide its employees with a better working life.

“We really raised the bar and I think we went a long way to annoying an awful lot of companies because then they had to go out and start spending money on their accommodations,” joked Richard Gunn, Leismer Lodge’s manager who has spent decades working in, managing and building resource camps around the world. “Life in this sort of situation is pleasant; a lot of these guys would move in permanently I’m sure. If we put in a bar we would not get rid of any of them.”

Forbidding drugs and alcohol on site is perhaps the only aspect of oil sands living to have survived from the previous generation, one marked by haphazard shelters, no leisure activities and no women. Those are the stereotypes that continue to besiege the sector as it attempts to attract an unprecedented number of new workers to help pull millions of barrels of valuable bitumen out of the ground. Yet as time goes on, those stereotypes are becoming more and more disconnected from the truth.

“The industry as a whole has changed a lot over the past few years,” said Mr. Gunn. “There are only so many bodies out there, particularly with the skill sets we’re looking for [and] across the industry the wages are more or less the same so it comes down to who has the better camp, who offers the better benefits and I know all these guys talk.”

Indeed, many newer camps such as the nearby Christina Lake site run by Cenovus Energy Inc. offer amenities more commonly found in a high-end all-inclusive resort than in a home for hardened labourers. To ensure Statoil retains its best and brightest, the Norwegian state-owned company spared no expense on Leismer, with plush leather seats dotting the movie theatre just beyond the front desk and a gourmet cafeteria beyond that, which is open all day every day.

Anyone with energy to spare at the end of a typical 12-hour day can take advantage of the $250,000 worth of gymnasium equipment. Those who need a little more energy can stop by the free Starbucks outlet (worth noting: Leismer is more than 150 kilometres from Fort McMurray and nearly 400 kilometres from Edmonton, so it likely boasts the only Starbucks in the area).

Outdoors, the site boasts a sand pit for beach volleyball, a horseshoe pit, a three-hole putting green and an electronic golf simulator that can be moved inside for when the cold weather hits.

Mr. Gunn also noted the facility is constantly adding more features, referencing the mound of dirt near the front gate that will soon be a skating rink.

But his favourite aspect of Leismer is nobody gets special treatment.

“I’ve found in the camps I’ve worked in before that when you have multiple grades of accommodation, you end up with an uncomfortable atmosphere,” he said. “But here it doesn’t matter if you’re the janitor or the CEO, you’re getting the same room. It makes for a nicer atmosphere.”

Those rooms, while physically no larger than what might be found in a college dorm, boast a number of lavish features often lacking even in the most expensive hotels. Each suite has individual heating and cooling systems as well as a large private shower with its own hot water heater.

Like the common amenities, the in-room features are also under constant improvement. When people complained about the 18-inch wall-mounted LCD televisions being too small, Mr. Gunn quickly received approval to replace them with 32-inch models.

Some old trends, like most resource camps being almost 100% male, cannot be fixed with better financing. Yet even that stereotype is becoming antiquated.

Mr. Gunn said about 30% of the on-site staff are females like Ms. Udala and she said she has never been made to feel uncomfortable because of her gender.

“The guys they have working here, they just end up treating you like a little daughter so they always watch out for you,” she said. “It really is like a family up here, so if you’re open and friendly to everyone up here and you get to know them then you fit in real quick.”

Going into someone else’s room is still prohibited, which can be frustrating for engaged or married couples.

Ms. Udala still manages the occasional sleepover with her fiancé, though she understands why they need to keep such interactions off the official radar.

“If you’re rubbing it in other people’s faces that you’ve got your partner up here when they don’t get to see theirs for maybe months at a time, that is being a little aggressive,” she said, adding that company-paid-for flights home for all staff taking days off makes homesickness virtually impossible.

It is a luxurious image of an industry known for some of the world’s harshest working environments that will undoubtedly help to tackle a mounting labour shortage, though it remains far from the norm.

Mr. Gunn said only about 10% of oil sands work camps boast the same quality as Leismer, and not even he can offer the same level of luxury to every occupant.

During the busy drilling season, Statoil must house some of its workers in a 600-person overflow camp down the road. Mostly just a collection of housing trailers, suffice to say there is no Starbucks there. However, considering the industry-wide trend, it might be more accurate to say there is no Starbucks there, yet.